


Leave the keys inside the skin

by keysmash



Series: Supernatural s5 Codas [25]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: spn_30snapshots, Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-03
Updated: 2010-05-03
Packaged: 2017-10-09 06:44:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keysmash/pseuds/keysmash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There has been a key<br/>for every lock you've picked<br/>& when you picked the locks<br/>the keys lost all their weight.</p><p>from Kevin A. González's "<a href="http://fishousepoems.org/archives/kevin_a_gonzalez/skin.shtml">Skin</a>"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leave the keys inside the skin

**Author's Note:**

> Dark Side of the Moon coda. Written for prompt 24 of my [](http://community.livejournal.com/spn_30snapshots/profile)[**spn_30snapshots**](http://community.livejournal.com/spn_30snapshots/) [table](http://latentfunction.livejournal.com/349450.html); previous codas are also linked in that post. Title from Kevin A. González.

Dean had all his own shit loaded into the back before Sam came out of the room. He was tucking something into his pocket with the blank expression that meant he was trying to be subtle, and Dean rolled his eyes. He got behind the wheel and waited for Sam to get his own gear away before starting the engine, giving her more gas than maybe he should have. She took it without a problem, though, and Dean ran his hands over the wheel once before tapping his fingers, and watching Sam walk around the side of the car.

No one had cut the crusts off Sam's fucking sandwiches because Sam liked the crust, and just because he couldn't remember the days when he ate his sandwiches in circles, getting his favorite part first, didn't mean Dean had forgotten. He hadn't forgotten the pie crusts he'd pushed across the tables, either, or the pizza crusts he'd passed to Sam, or the first time they'd been left longer than Dad promised, due to some complication in the hunt, and Dean had given Sam the edges of his own sandwiches even while Dean was eating them open-faced, to stretch their loaf of bread that much further. Dean knew a little about burdens, and how to carry them, and however much he'd weighed, Sam had been almost as heavy.

He slid into shotgun and closed the door without looking towards Dean. He put his hands in his lap, letting them fall loose and open, almost relaxed, but he kept his face towards the window. Dean rolled his eyes again and backed the car out of their spot.

Sam had cut up their shot-through shirts and soaked them in peroxide in the room's plastic ice bucket while Dean checked out of the motel. Dean figured that starting a fire in their room was a bad idea — their neighbors had apparently been willing to let gunshots go as none of their business, but smoke would send people into the halls — and so they dropped the clothes in a dumpster on their way out of town, with all their other trash. It wasn't the most careful thing they could have done, but Dean wasn't worried. They were legally dead, and apparently they couldn't stay actually dead until this mess was over, and either way, they hadn't done the shooting themselves. They were fine.

The Apocalypse may have been on Dean's hands, he wasn't arguing with anyone about that, but he was at least doing something to try to stop it, instead of running around killing people in their beds. Fucking assholes.

It was good, for Walt and Roy, that Sam had been in his own bed last night, that they'd both kept their pants on and hadn't done anything to stink the room up like sex. That knowledge would have been enough to move them from possible targets, people to take out if the opportunity presented itself but not to chase down, to something that needed to be taken care of ASAP. Sam and Dean had both done worse things in the past than kill people who'd killed them first — hell, Sam had done that very thing — and honestly, Dean sort of wanted to chase them out anyway. They'd killed Sam, again, and since seeing Sam dead even once was one time too many, Walt and Roy were firmly on Dean's shit list. It was their own good luck they weren't at the top.

They had to go through downtown on their way out of town, and traffic sucked. The highway was full of jerks who didn't know how to just merge to the left and settle in for a long drive. The sun outside was already high, but it wasn't too hot, and after a few miles, they rolled the windows down, Sam first and then Dean.

Next to him, Sam stretched his legs out and sighed heavily, then reached over and turned up the music. It was one of the Metallica mix-tapes Dean picked up at a garage sale years ago, but Sam didn't complain. He just rearranged his feet again and kept staring out the window.

The outside air was nice, blowing through the windows and over Dean's skin, and Sam eventually unfolded his arms. The car was pretty clean, without the usual junk fluttering around the foot wells, and the hum of the engine was perfectly familiar, running great. It was just the car, carrying his family down the road the same as it had throughout all the years of Dean's life. Maybe there was something wrong with him, lord knows that people had made the claim often enough, but he couldn't see why anyone would want to leave this behind.

"Are we really not going to talk about it?" Sam said finally, talking over the music and still not glancing towards Dean.

Dean shrugged, not caring that Sam apparently wasn't going to watch him do it. For his part, he didn't look away from the bumper of the car in front of him. "Depends on what part you mean."

"That last memory we saw — Dean, that was like ten years ago. It —"

"Yeah, this is one of the things where we're not," Dean interrupted, keeping his eyes on traffic. "You wanna stop once we get out of this, or are you good til lunch?"

Sam sighed. "I'm fine either way."

Dean tapped his index finger on the wheel. "Let's keep going, then. I wanna get out of here."

Sam cast him a look, finally turning to face the entire left side of the car, but he didn't say anything. He readjusted his feet a little, bending his left leg at the knee, and when he finished eying Dean, he stayed angled to the side instead of going back to looking out the window. He didn't say anything else until they got out of town, when he started pointing out billboards advertising diners, all a few more hours down the road.


End file.
